The Local Correction Trap in Queue-Forming Systems

This preprint develops the Local Correction Trap as a scope-relative cross-level dynamic in which institutionally valid local correction may coexist with continued pathway-level unresolved burden. An actor may correctly improve, stabilise, transfer, or close the state available within its observation, authority, action, and performance boundaries without altering the broader relation that generates recurrent burden. The framework distinguishes local correction from pathway-level correction and separates generator potential, realised recurrence, information return, route capacity, activated action, and corrective realisation. It specifies conditions under which locally valid interventions may fail to produce broader corrective closure, while also preserving countercases in which local correction does improve pathway-level function. The contribution is a diagnostic architecture rather than a claim that local action is erroneous or ineffective by definition. Its pre-empirical translation layer requires explicit generator specification, linked temporal evidence, return-state reconstruction, recurrence evidence, compensation checks, rival-mechanism testing, and protected indeterminate and mixed outcomes. This is Paper IV in the research programme Fragmentation, Capacity, and Queue Formation in Complex Institutional Systems.